Phil Spencer: We have signed exclusives that won't be finished for release for 2-3 years.

One of the biggest criticism’s Xbox is facing right now is the lack of first-party titles and studios, and what we mean by lack of first-party titles is the big AAA experiences everyone wants to see. Head of Xbox gave an interview to Waypoint reassuring fans Microsoft has plans to invest a lot more in exclusives. He explained the focused was on hardware first – which the team has nailed – then Xbox Live now putting more focus on exclusives.
Here’s a long quote from wccftech on Phil Spencer’s interview:
“When I started this job three years ago, hardware was a real focus for us because I thought we had more work to do there. Xbox One S shipped last year, the X is shipping this year, I love our hardware line. Xbox Live was something I wanted to focus, coming on Android, iOS, Windows PC because I really want people to play games on the place they want to go play.
Our first party is a critical part of that equation. Yesterday, I know people want to see what we’re investing in new.
We are investing in new things, we signed things just recently that I thought, ‘Hey, from a PR standpoint it would be really easy for me to put a trailer on screen’, but then I know the game is not coming for another two and half or three years, so I didn’t want to do that.
I understand some people would say, ‘Hey, that would give me confidence in the future of Xbox’…
This is a cheesy line, but I’ll just say, trust that this is important to us as a platform. From the top CEO of the company down, if you talked to Satya [Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO] he would say ‘I understand, we need to invest in content in the gaming space’.
That is important and we are going to invest. We have Sea of Thieves, Crackdown 3, State of Decay 2, Lucky’s Tale, Ori and the Will of the Wisps…But I know what you’re asking about. Big, triple A console games, I hear that and I’m committed to that. Today I wanted to talk about things that if you’re going to buy the console you will be able to play, but I’ll continue to work to deliver games. We did on hardware, we did on platform and [backward] compatibility and we will do this on first-party as well. It is critically important.”